Growing uncertainty is a frequently put forward to explain the slowdown in business activity, due to the wait-and-see attitudes it tends to generate. But this is a vague concept, difficult to characterise and measure. This paper presents several uncertainty indicators suggested by the academic literature and puts them into perspective: the number of times uncertainty-related terms occur in the press; the volatility of economic measures (such as the industrial production index or stock market index); forecasting errors made using an economic model.

In the leading five European economies, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, all these indicators increase during periods of economic slowdown, as defined by the OECD. Furthermore, over the period 1999-2017, the citation-based indicator has an upward trend in all the countries. This is not the case for the others, which have tended rather to fall for ten years.

Thus, the macroeconomic uncertainty and uncertainty expressed in the press seem to follow different rules. This independence is mainly demonstrated by looking at two events. In 2008, in the crisis period, macroeconomic indicators experienced their greatest fluctuations while uncertainty expressed in the press was relatively inert, contrary to what was seen in 2016 during the 'Brexit' period.

Taking uncertainty indicators overall, the special features of countries appear less significant than their common trends. In this sense, France is not particularly different from its European partners.